Underlying Philosophy

Philosophy is "the rational investigation of the truths and principles of being, knowledge, or conduct.". So your philosophy with regards to being, knowledge, and conduct etc., does not include God, so that it would be proper for us to say "the starting point of your philosophy is that there is no God".

Your philosophy with regards to being, knowledge, and conduct etc., does not include unicorns. Would be proper for us to say "the starting point of your philosophy is that there are no unicorns"?

It would be improper, however, for me to say that atheism was the foundation of your thinking. It would be more proper for me to say that naturalism, or materialism, or atomism is the foundation of your philosophical thought.

More proper, perhaps, but still wrong.

But they aren't exactly fundamental reasons. My challenge to your anecdote would go something like this: how do you know that eating will satisfy your hunger? And if you say "because of past experience", then I would ask "how do you know that your memory is reliable?". But we won't go there now, so there is no need in answering those questions, as similar ones have already been asked.

And answered.

I didn't claim that atheists can't use logic, just that atheists have no good reason for believing that the laws of logic are reliable.

You did, in fact, claim that in so many words.If you now instead wish to claim that "atheists have no good reason for believing that the laws of logic are reliable", you're wrong about that too. I've given mine.

All these things function in such a way that we would refer to them as orderly, and since I believe that God has created them, then obviously God must be an orderly God to have created all these things.

Are earthquakes and tsunamis also orderly? Only they do seem to make such a mess .

I've never had the problem of arguing with someone who told me that I had no arguments.

I didn't; I said you had no evidence for the existence of God. You have plenty of arguments . They just seem to be unfounded on anything that I can go and look at.If you wanted to argue in favor of the existence of a real thing such as a giraffe, you would not need to commit a string of naive philosophical blunders, you'd just show me evidence of a giraffe.

Which worldview makes sense of the laws of logic? ​ Which worldview makes sense of the uniformity of nature? ​ Which worldview makes sense of morals/morality? ​ Which worldview makes sense of the reliability of our memory?

Mine. Since you ask.

And my favorite; which worldview makes sense of universals?

What does that even mean?Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Meaning is complex, and "self-aware" and "love" are particularly difficult examples. What people are expressing, when they use those terms, depends on contextual considerations. No easy definition is possible, as far as I can tell. I am not my brain. Yes, some people talk that way, though I think it a confusing way of talking. I'd be cautious about that "abstract entity" idea. Your soul is an abstract entity, but you are not. That does not seem to make a lot of sense.People at evcforum might reasonably see you as an abstract entity, because they only know of you from forum posts. People who know you as flesh and blood would not think of you as abstract. You control you.

Then what does it mean to be self-aware, and to love?

I'd use these phrases in the normal sense.

Now as to the brain and the soul... ​ If you are your brain, then why do we refer to your brain as "your brain"?

Would you prefer us to rewrite the English language so that every attempt for you to deny mental materialism is an oxymoron? It seems a bit Orwellian.

We refer to "your brain" as if there was someone or something {the "your") that owns or controls the brain. If you go to a doctor, and he finds a tumor in your brain (there we go again), he doesn't tell you "you have a tumor in you". He would say "you have a tumor in your brain". Likewise, if I say that I have a tick in me, that doesn't mean that its in my brain (there we go again), it means that it is somewhere in my body (there we go again).

Well, that's just the English language for you. In the same way, people talk of "my soul" or "my self" or "my being"; you know, like this ...

Myself, or my being is abstract, because we constantly refer to "your brain", or, "your heart", or "your body". So who is the "your" in those statements? Who is the person that owns the brain, heart, and body? If you come take my brain out of me (or to be proper, we should say "come and take me"), you haven't taken "me" anymore than you would if you took my heart, or my lungs, or my thumb. Even if you destroy my body, you haven't killed "me", because "me" is an abstract concept. ​ This abstract "me" includes my soul, my heart and my mind.

This all seems very muddled.I would refer you once again to the facts of neurology. It would seem that in ordinary language you include such things as your memories, your tastes, your opinions, your mental abilities, and so forth. Apparently, destroying bits of your brain destroys these things. If every bit of your brain is destroyed, what is the "you" who is left? An abstraction without an instantiation seems a very poor thing: in fact, it seems to be nothing at all.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Depends how we define 'atrocity'. If atrocity is defined as being 'grossly immoral acts' then of course it was inherently wrong. Otherwise, no, they were not inherently wrong regardless of consequences. The morals I think you are referring to are the rationalisations for our sense of morality which are based on culture and upbringing. Biological and social conditioning. Because despite the conditioning, there are also other forces in play that can mean someone thinks murder is a viable option. If the conditioning isn't enough then other things are brought into play (ie., deterrents for murdering and rewards for not murdering). Because I have to live along with them. And so do you. And so we, along with others, all agree that enacting consequences is a good idea (we do seem to have a biological disposition towards punishing transgressors (much like other social animals often do), so don't take my words to mean humans literally sat down and reasoned this out).Humans have a brain which allows for reflective thinking. So we noticed we behaved in a certain way (punishing transgressors) and some of them reflected on this and asked "Why do we do that?", early answers were "The gods commanded it." but other thinkers have refined that a bit more as the body of thinking and the body of evidence has accumulated). No. It's just something I don't want other people to do and if they do it, I want them to be punished becausea) I have an instinctual desire for vengeance
b) I want to rationally discover optimum methods for reducing my risk (and my families/allies risk) of being murdered. Game Theory seems like a good tool to use to help us find optimum methods in so far as we assume everybody acts rationally.

My dog doesn't murder. She doesn't commit atrocities. She's even pretty nice to the cats. Yet she has no soul nor any gods (except maybe me). I think religions fool their believers into believing that people can't be good or moral without faith.It doesn't appear that belief in invisible beings is necessary for morality at all. There certainly is no evidence that the religious are more moral than their non believing peers though I'm sure that each sect imagines that their sect is more moral than the sects with conflicting beliefs. And there's definitely evidence that people have used religion to justify some pretty immoral behavior. Oddly, gods seem to have the same prejudices as the people who believe in them.Theists often seem so confused to me-- they don't seem to be able to tell a fact (the kind of thing that is true for everyone no matter who believes what) from everything else (opinion, belief, conjecture, ideal, motto, parable, motto, etc.) I can't tell if religion has muddled their thinking or if those with muddled thinking are more likely to be drawn to religion.

Catholic Scientist, My logical progression was a very lengthy one, but that doesn't necessarily meant that it is an equivocation.For example, the following is a one-step logical progression: if Sally dances, the crowd will go wild, therefore, since Sally danced, the crowd went wild. This is a one-step logical progression.Now we could extend this logical progression one or more steps: if Sally dances, the crowd will go wild. If the crowd goes wild, security will have to calm the crowd down. If security has to calm the crowd down, then Bob (a security guard) will have to leave his post. Therefore, if Sally dances, Bob will have to leave his post.Now this was just a three-step progression, which does not make it an equivocation. Now need I go through all the steps from the Big Bang to your pencil rolling of the desk? The steps are there, and there are quite a few of them; but this does not make it an equivocation.But this isn't the point anyways, so it really isn't worth discussing anymore. My point in discussing the Big Bang is asking how the universe can go from being a pin-point (or whatever) of space-time, into an incredibly massive universe with a small planet in it upon which the most amazingly complex processes have come up. And besides, without God, where did that pin-point of space-time come from in the first place? If the Big Bang hadn't happened (in an evolutionist's worldview; I don't believe that it happened) then mammals wouldn't have formed, would they?Although there isn't a direct causal-effect relationship between the Big Bang and the forming of mammals, as in a "one-step" relationship, there is a relationship, one that might take multiple steps (e.g., the Big Bang caused matter to form, causing pebbles to form, causing rocks to form, causing planetoids to form, causing planets to form, etc. etc.). This can be explained by hormones, because, after all, a peacock's tail is used for attracting mates. But do Peacock's build art galleries? Do they compose music? Do they sing for the sake of singing? Do they take pictures of beautiful landscapes, or admire beautiful landscapes?And even if peacocks and monkeys do have an aesthetic sense, don't you think it's an awfully big jump from them to Beethoven's 5th symphony? Or Bach's well-tempered Clavier? Or Michael Angelo's sculptures? Or Leonardo Da Vinci? Or William Shakespeare?... Edited by sac51495, : No reason given.

This is far from accurate. It is not "based" on the dead sea scrolls. The scrolls were referenced that is about it. Lots of the dead sea scrolls are not part of the accepted canon. So your statement that it is based on the dead scrolls is complete and utter bullshit.From the publishers website

quote:

---

For the Old Testament the standard Hebrew text, the Masoretic Text as published in the latest editions of Biblia Hebraica, was used throughout. The Dead Sea Scrolls contain material bearing on an earlier stage of Hebrew text. They were consulted, as were the Samaritan Pentateuch and the ancient scribal traditions relating to textual changes. Sometimes a variant Hebrew reading in the margin of the Masoretic Text was followed instead of the text itself. Such instances, being variant within the Masoretic tradition, are not specified by footnotes. In rare cases, words in the consonantal text were divided differently from the way they appear in the Masoretic Text. Footnotes indicate this. The translators also consulted the more important early versions - the Septuagint; Aquila, Symmachus and Theodotion; the Vulgate; the Syriac Peshitta; the Targums; and for the Psalms the Juxta Hebraica of Jerome. Readings from these versions were occasionally followed where the Masoretic Text seemed doubtful and where accepted principles of textual criticism showed that one or more of these textual witnesses appeared to provide the correct reading. Such instances are footnoted. Sometimes vowel letters and vowel signs did not, in the judgment of the translators, represent the correct vowels for the original consonantal text. Accordingly some words were read with a different set of vowels. These instances are usually not indicated by footnotes.

---

My bold. There are no originals. Or maybe you have some sort of access no one knows about?

---

Facts don't lie or have an agenda. Facts are just facts

Modulous, What is it about "wrongful killing" that makes it inherently wrong? Why do governments have the right to punish someone who commits murder? Why would it be wrong for me to come find you and kill you? Something is not "wrong" because of consequences. Something can be "stupid" to do because of consequences, but that doesn't make it wrong. Something is defined as wrong if there is something about the crime itself that makes it morally incorrect.So suppose we were in a place where there were no consequences for murder. Does it then become right to murder you? Oh really? I didn't know my brain made value judgments on its own...I just thought that my brain was the control center in the upper portions of my head that sent messages to my nerves, and that controlled my thought processes...never knew that...So is there a limit to what value judgments my brain can make for me?Or what about a baby's brain? You said our brains are hardwired to not rampantly kill people, indicating that our brains have always been that way. So is a baby's brain that way?And what defines "rampant" killing anyways?And even if your statement is true, how would this come about? That is, how would a brain "evolve" to a point where it does not naturally kill people "rampantly"? Apparently "our latest ancestors", orangutans (I know we didn't come directly from orangutans; we supposedly came from a common ancestor of monkeys and humans), are not bothered by rampant killing. In fact, they cannibalize each other, and are apparently never punished for it, nor do they seem bothered by it. So why are humans bothered by killing, or death period? And further, why is it a bad thing for humans to be upset by death? And suppose I hadn't? Would murder still be wrong?

It is wrong because society said it is wrong. Yes, it would be right. Not very bright of you to even try, but it would be right.

---

Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

That's far enough. The answer to my question is: "Yes, I am saying the big bang caused your pencil to roll off your desk."Sorry man, but you are equivocating the word "cause". No, because you're not using the normal sense of the word "cause". The Big Bang did not cause my pencil to fall off my desk... I bumped it with my knee. That's what caused it. So like I said in Message 423:

quote:

---

Just because something happens after something does not mean that that something caused it to happen. You have to zoom out too far to be practicle to see it as the Big Band causing mammals to form.

---

At this point, your argument has lost its profundity. You might as well be asking how Van Gogh's father ejaculating caused such a beautiful painting of sunflowers... as Dr. Adequate pointed out in Message 375. Note he recognized the equivocation as well. But... but, you're wrong! It took a really, really long time and a whole lot of different stuff happened in between.I mean, essentially your argument is: "ZOMG! Its sooo amazing! There must be a god..."No offense, but that is infantile. Nonsense. What's north of the North Pole? Of course not. Too, if Van Gogh's father hadn't ejaculated, there'd be no painting Sunflowers. ZOMG! How amazing! How could an ejaculation cause such a thing? That's so profound. There must be a god These are immature arguments, sac. I suspect you're young. You have a lot of learning to do. Ours can be explained too. More juvenile nonsense. Yeah, sure. So what? An octopi's color changing ability is an awefully big jump as well. Or an eagle's eyesight. Or a rat's tooth (interestingly, we cannot emulate the enamal in a rat's tooth and the only way we know of having that structure created is by it growing in a rat's mouth, sythetic trials have failed)What you'll eventually find though, is all the things that humans can do are just modifications to things that another animal can do. There's nothing we can do that they can't, by category. Everything is a an alteration of a previous ability.And that's exactly what we'd expect to see if evolution happened.Seriously though, arguments from incredulity that conclude god existing look neat when you're childlike. Hopefully you'll mature enough to realize you're only impressing yourself.While you're at it, realize that none of my rebuttles to your arguments have anything to do with whether or not god exists. And I think she does.

Dr. Adequate, "Then the LORD God called to Adam and said to him, Where are you? So he said, I heard Your voice in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; and I hid myself. And He said, Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you that you should not eat? " - (Genesis 3:9-11)In asking these questions to Adam, the LORD God presumes Adam to have a reliable memory. Therefore, we have a reliable memory.Now isn't that a working reason for why our memories are reasonably reliable? Do you have a reason for believing that our memories are reasonably reliable? Then what is self-awareness, and love? Oh what a ramshackled world we live in! Nothing makes sense! Nothing is complex! Nothing works well! Oh wait, that's in Dr. Adequate's dream world. In the world I live in, I can make sense of a lot of things, I see an absolutely incredible amount of complexity, and I see a lot of things that work together to make this world work pretty well...sounds like a bunch of ramshackle to me...not. So you don't have any reason for knowing that your memory is reliable, which means that you have ultimately no reason for doing any thing that you do. But I do have a good reason for relying on my memory, compliments of the aforementioned Scripture passage. How do I know that I am not mentally insane? Well, following your logic of "presuming nothing to be true until proven so", until you can prove that I am mentally insane, I will believe that my memory is reliable, and my reason for thinking that my memory can be reliable is, once again, because of God.Now to prevent an objection; I am not arguing that you have no reason for believing that you are not mentally insane. I am saying that you have no reason for making the arbitrary assumption that your memory even has the ability to be reliable. You do have a good reason for not believing you are mentally insane: no one has proven it to be so. But you do not (as you have admitted) have a good reason for thinking that there is even a remote possibility of your memory being reliable.My reason for believing that I am not mentally insane is the same as yours: no one has proven it to be so. But, unlike you, I do have a reason for believing that there is even a remote possibility of my memory being reliable: because of the aforementioned Scripture passage.Edited by sac51495, : No reason given.

The 'wrongful' bit makes it inherently wrong.It's a bit like asking

quote:

---

What is it about a "leftward turn" that makes it inherently towards the left?

---

A complex question of political philosophy. Locke, Hobbes and Rousseau are possible sources for answering that question. See The Social Contract for a start. It's not inherently wrong. Unless you are a consequentialist, of course. Correct. A meaningless tautology, yes? A paradox: Murder necessarily has the consequence of my death.But let's imagine it was true... No. Yes. See: Moral judgments, emotions and the utilitarian brain, Jorge Molla, and Ricardo de Oliveira-Souza - Trends in Cognitive Sciences, Volume 11, Issue 8, August 2007, Pages 319-321FRONTOPOLAR AND ANTERIOR TEMPORAL CORTEX ACTIVATION IN A MORAL JUDGMENT TASK, Jorge Moll, Paul J. Eslinger, Ricardo de Oliveira-Souza, Arq. Neuro-Psiquiatr. vol.59 no.3B So Paulo Sept. 2001 Damage to the prefrontal cortex increases utilitarian moral judgements , Michael Koenigs, Liane Young, Ralph Adolphs, Daniel Tranel, Fiery Cushman, Marc Hauser & Antonio Damasio - Nature 446, 908-911 (19 April 2007)Morals and the human brain: a working model, Moll, Jorge; de Oliveira-Souza, Ricardo; Eslinger, Paul J. Neuroreport:
3 March 2003 - Volume 14 - Issue 3 - pp 299-305:

quote:

---

Morality has been at the center of informal talks and metaphysical discussions since the beginning of history. Recently, converging lines of evidence from evolutionary biology, neuroscience and experimental psychology have shown that morality is grounded in the brain. This article reviews the main lines of investigation indicating that moral behavior is a product of evolutionary pressures that shaped the neurobehavioral processes related to the selective perception of social cues, the experience of moral emotions and the adaption of behavioral responses to the social milieu. These processes draw upon specific cortical-subcortical loops that organize social cognition, emotion and motivation into uniquely human forms of experience and behavior. We put forth a model of brain-behavior relationships underlying moral reasoning and emotion that accommodates the impairments of moral behavior observed in neuropsychiatric disorders. This model provides a framework for empirical testing with current methods of neurobehavioral analysis.

---

That should demonstrate your main contention that the brain is not the source of your moral decisions to be a hasty one. As for in-group out-group behaviour I'll leave that as an exercise for the student. Let me reword that to make more consistent sense.

quote:

---

So is there a limit to what value judgments my brain can make?

---

I would presume so. For instance my grandfather's brain almost certiainly never made value judgements on file-sharing of mp3s. I'm sure your brain will never make value judgements about more things than it does make value judgements about. I don't know at what point during the brain's development that kind of moral decision making is possible. Given what studies I have seen into moral development in children it is entirely feasible that a baby has not yet fully developed a moral differentiation between in and out groups.

quote:

---

rampant: Occurring without restraint and frequently, widely, or menacingly

---

Through variation and natural selection. Not all animal brains do it - so it is not a necessary state of affairs.Butif there are reproductive advantages to acting in cooperation with a close family member.
and
if there is variation in cooperativeness among the population
then we might expect those that cooperate more to 'out-reproduce' those that cooperate less if all other things are equal.And you know this is true - because 'aggression' is a trait that dogs have that breeders are aware of and attempt to breed in the desired direction. Simply interrupting the biochemical pathways to adrenaline production can reduce aggression which allows for even inadvertent cooperation. Yes they are. What makes you think that other primates engage in and are not bothered by rampant killing? Why orangutans? Have you recently read Murders in the Rue Morgue or something? Intraspecific killing does occur in these species, but as far as I know it is predominantlya) Former alpha males who are toppled from power
b) Loners
c) Members of other groupsIe., mostly outgroups.There is often aggression and sometimes violence within a group - especially over hierarchical ranks and mating rights (which are two concepts often linked)...but that's true of humans too. I'm not sure why you think it is a bad thing. If murder is 'wrongful killing' then yes, you would. You'd just rationalise it differently and possibly have different views on what killing comes under the category: 'wrongful'.

---

Have you given up trying to demonstrate that your moral philosophy does not end up in essentially the same place?Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

If God thought that one person could remember one thing, that would not imply that everyone can remember everything. And in point of fact we can't. I have a reason for believing that human memory in general is grossly unreliable; and that at least some people are hopelessly amnesiac. A dictionary would be your friend here. I don't have any special secret definitions of these terms. No, that's something you made up in your head because, apparently, you're incapable of answering my actual arguments.I find that rather pathetic. But it is not a good reason, because you could apply the same unreasoning to the same Scripture passage if in fact you had Korsakov's syndrome.Now an argument that would prove your memory to be reliable even if you were a confabulatory amnesiac is clearly worthless. Leaving you in the same boat as the rest of us. That wasn't my only reason. I explained the more fundamental reason at length in post #430. But since you also have to admit the possibility that you're nuts, this still leaves you with a problem. Because in order to say that this "reason" is a reason, then you have to suppose that you are reasonable enough to know a good reasonable reason from a bad unreasonable reason.Now in point of fact you're not, as I have demonstrated, but that's just ordinary incompetence. However, you could in principle be nuttier yet. This "Scripture" thing you keep talking about, for example. Given that you might be nuts, how do you know that its very existence isn't the product of your (potentially) frothing and fervid brain?Before you can start appealing to some external authority, you first have to assume that you're sane enough to find out about the external world. Like everyone else does, including those people who aren't.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Dr. Adequate, There are two different aspects to this argument. One - which is the aspect you have been discussing - is one which discusses whether one is mentally stable, or mentally insane. Now for one who is mentally insane, chances are that they have an idea of what it is like to have a more or less reliable memory, because they probably had a decently reliable memory at some point in their past. This is obviously why they continue to depend on their memory, even though that memory is oftentimes disillusioned.But the other aspect is this: either our memory has the ability to be reliable, or it isn't ever reliable, nor can it be. If it were impossible for our memories to be reliable, then that would be the norm, and we wouldn't think it unusual that we didn't rely on our memories. Also, if our memories were never reliable, we wouldn't ever seek to depend on them. We actually wouldn't even really have a memory. This kind of a world would obviously be insane. But without God, what reason do we have for ever thinking that our memory can be depended upon? You've already said that ultimately, you have none. One last thing of note - when I said you have no reason for relying on your memory, I am not saying that you have no reason for believing that you don't have Korsakov's syndrome, or Alzheimer's disease. I am saying that you have no reason for believing that it is even possible for your memory to be reliable. So I'm not accusing you of not knowing whether or not you are mentally diseased, because this would imply that it is possible for you memory to be reliable. I am arguing that you have no reason for thinking that there is even the slightest, most remote possibility that your memory even has the ability to be reliable (the word ability is important).So what are my reasons? "In the beginning God created" (Gen. 1:1); "The eternal God is your refuge," (Deut. 33:27); "In the beginning was the Word" (John 1:1). These verses either imply, or state explicitly that God is eternal. This means He is outside of time. When is the "beginning"? The beginning is when time began, or when God created time. God is outside of time, therefore, it is impossible for His memory to be unreliable, because He really has no need of a memory, because He is not caught in the space-time continuum, and therefore, past events cannot be forgotten, because with God, there is no past, or future; eternalness. Since God created us in His image (Gen. 1:26), then He created us with the ability to be able to remember past events, just like He is unable to forget past events. Now of course, the reason God doesn't forget past events is different; He is outside of time, while we are created with the ability to remember past events.Now somebody said that "if unreliable memories are a result of sin, then those who sin more are the ones with more unreliable memories"...read Genesis 3:17-19, which is the curse given by God on mankind. Diseases etc. are the result of the curse, and whoever is overtaken by these diseases, and whoever is not, is determined by God and God alone. It is not proportional to man's actions, for it lies in the curse.Edited by sac51495, : No reason given.Edited by sac51495, : No reason given.Edited by sac51495, : No reason given.

Huh?Here is Genesis 3:17-19...

quote:

---

17And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life;

​

18Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field;

​

19In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.

---

Where is there anything about disease in there? Where is there anything in there that even implies "whoever is overtaken by these diseases, and whoever is not, is determined by God and God alone"?

---

Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!